


E.J.W.

by MissDragonSpire



Category: Original Work, The Void RP Canon
Genre: Context might be required to understand some of this, Gen, Implied Torture, Mentions of Murder, Psychological Horror, Void RP Canon, grim themes, mentions of blood and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-19 04:44:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20325298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissDragonSpire/pseuds/MissDragonSpire
Summary: He didn't know what was waiting for him. He'd died once before, and had been turned into a lich to be allowed a second chance. And now that, too, has been spent. Death has penetrated the door, and the glass has ensnared him. It's not exactly an angel who has come to judge his soul.





	E.J.W.

He woke when he expected to die.

His consciousness shunted, no longer on the cafe floor grasping his daughter's hand and trying to tell her he loved her one more time. As someone who once, a long time ago, had been a God-fearing man, he was aware of the belief that the soul went to be judged at death. And now that he properly had died - even liches could die - his spirit was waiting. 

But there were no pearly gates. No angel standing over him, no golden lights, nor even a lick of flame or glint of brimstone to hint at the way down. This was Elsewhere. 

This "Elsewhere" was swallowed in murk, and would have been wholly dark if not for a wash of green whose source was unknown, and the few dozen candle flames coming off two other bookshelves. The room swayed like a ship on sea - or, he considered apprehensively, like the monster whale from that one book - and glass clinked against class. A spot of seasickness struck, thinking of either option. When his sight adjusted he could make out a desk and a stool to a wall, papers of some kind of research pinned to other walls, and a table laid smack in the center of the maze-like mess. The workings of a study shoved into the skeleton of a bedroom.

The table called to attention something off. Half was in the dark, but it was narrow and covered with a pinstripe bed sheet, and the "X" fold of its legs hinted it could fold into the adjacent wall, much like an ironing board. But the similarities ended here, because with a more studious gander, he realized it wasn't for clothes. The viewing angle had to be creative to catch the leather cuffs under the sides, and though the headrest was cushy, the circle of splotchy color on the sheet couldn't be ignored once noticed. 

Sickly bile at the back of the throat - the feeling akin to it - burned strongly as a desire to be anywhere, anywhere else.

He looked for a distraction, whatever took away from the table or its stain. Where was the light coming from? It glinted like a flashlight was shone on him through a window pane, yet it was all around like a spotlight. The ones from the bookcases were a possible answer, but...

The bookcases were simple, if also forgotten like the place they seemed to have been purchased from. The few books peeking ajar from the shelves suffered the same. But it wasn't the books that glowed. It was the bottles.

Five or six dozen bottles put in between books so they clinked against each other and not the floor rolled idly with the room's ship-like sway. Bubbles of glass, they were the same size as an adult's squeezed fist. And the glowing, spectral, was because of what occupied them. The flames, one in each, resisted airtight imprisonment, and were labeled with a taped paper flap. Not quite candle flames at all for as they were. Each glowed an impossible color; the shades varied, but they were as many as found on an artist's palette, or a rainbow.

All except for green.

"Occupied" was the chosen word because "filled" felt disrespectful. It implicated dead things. Inanimate things. It implied an object, a toy abandoned over hundreds of years as useless junk, trapped forever in between glass walls. No. Even with the cork in place they burned fierce, angry, left with the ghost of their last memories.

And it was here that the answers were picked out of the fog. Why were none of the other flames green? How did he know there were two _other_ bookcases, or that he was in the corner nearest to them? And where was the green light coming from? Or, better yet, why was his the only green light? Now that he thought of it... he did feel taller than his mortal five-foot-ten. Yet he was small. The world could cave in on him and there would be little for him to do or say to save himself.

The thunderclap played again.

The hands of the Void Shadow came together in the final memory - fighting, glaring, defending, bleeding, falling. The Shadow- no, White Priest...

He finished his game, he cut the puppet strings and sent the three spears through his subordinate, having smashed the phylactery that kept him stable. And then Magey... she had his hand so tight, trying to look brave, and Seth working in vain to save a dead man.

But it wasn't Seth, or Magey - not even White - who had three quarters of a scarred soul in between her ragged fingernails, and had been digging into it with the most unlikely weapon of a toy scalpel.

And his consciousness, with nowhere else to go, went straight to that green flame captured in his own bottle. The wall of the third bookshelf, and paper flap identifying him as a lich, were impossible to ignore at the edge of his sight. 

Terror dug in. It dug deep and made horrible knots in... what? In what? His brain? He had none. His heart? None, nothing that wasn't turned to rotted flesh with the rest of his broken body. There was nothing, nothing was left, nothing but the scarred soul, scarred and flaking, one portion gone, eaten like candy, that's all he was. 

How else could he have known? And how else could he know who possessed that remainder than being visited by its captor not ten days before White had murdered him?

The room reared again, much more violently. His bottle tipped. No books, no pens or inkwells to keep him on the shelf. He dropped...

...and was caught.

Her hand coiled around the glass, and a glimpse of a chipped nail glinted his soul's glow. He was brought up to eye level, meeting the set of daisy-yellow eyes. Almost lovingly she stared, but only if he were a pet and she were a saint. If he were still human she would have been shorter, almost dwarfish compared to him. Better yet, she was the tiger cub, miniscule and adorable at first sight... but able and willing to maim.

Psychi put the bottle on the not-ironing table. The blood stain was close, too close to him. Her sight never left as she clicked her nails and brought into her hands a sheet of paper. It crinkled from being smoothed over, and some splotches containing the words, as she held it close to one of the other souls, were transparent.

"'E.J.W., age fifty-eight years, seven months, eight days at date of death.'" A toy scalpel, purposely sharpened, was fished from her pocket. She twirled it while reading. "'Born on July twenty-second, nint-'"

She paused. She turned the paper over. And again, and a third time. And she tittered. "Ah, seems somebody has been playing with time magic. I've lost your birth year."

If able, he would have glared. She stared back, a fingernail close to her lips, pale and cracked and unable to moisturize with a flick of her tongue. "Oh well! It was for the paperwork," she confessed, crumpling the sheet, "but I've little need for that. The memories will do just fine on their own. Do you agree, Cat Man?"

Snatching the bottle once more, she sweetly smiled. The lilt in the nickname brought coldness to Elias.

Resist as he might, the choice had been taken away long ago.

Clicking again - sharp and resounding as a call to attention - a body materialized on the table, and Elias' reflection dimmed. 

The corpse had been dragged through a nightmare. The chef attire was stained, the three symbols identifying the restaurant soiled by blood not given time to dry. He knew its face, its dark circles, its scars dealt in one night of realizing how much of a fool he'd been in life. If Psychi pulled up the sleeve she'd find the faint line from the half-dozen times its arm randomly dropped. Its half-lidded eyes, once an alluring green, had clouded, and were fixed in an expression of despair.

Seeing himself forced a dissociation of the physical. Not many could say they were literally out of body. 

Psychi made a show of strapping one of its limp wrists to the tightest notch. The same for the other, and the ankles. She moved its neck so the head rested in the cushion.

"Now then," she said, certain he had gotten a good look at the token of his regret. Tugging the cork free, she tipped the bottle, forcing Elias into her clammy hand. He tried to move, but he was a soul; no organ to command with, all he could do was flicker. He was a spectator to his own hell. "I've always wanted to emulate the greats. I'm feeling 'Pretty in Panther'. Sound good, my friend?"

And she seized him, and slammed the soul into Elias Wreath's dead chest, soon to revive, before he could answer anything.

"Then let's start."


End file.
